The new Bourne movie

I agree with you in general about shaky-cam-rapid-cut action directing, but I think the Bourne movies were the sole example where this actually worked.

I read The Bourne Identity when it was first published (I might have been 14 or 15), and reread all the Ludlum books a couple of years ago when I got a collected volume.

The major plot point of the book was that Jason Bourne was not an assassin - he was a military officer who pretended to be an assassin to draw out Carlos the Jackal. There was no brainwashing, Treadstone was basically clean, they just thought that Jason had turned.

The movie made Jason a brainwashed assassin with amnesia, got rid of Carlos (who was in prison by the time the movie was made) and made Treadstone bad, and they got worse during the series.

Don’t get me wrong - I liked the movies, they were fun. But they don’t connect in my mind to the books, which captured the Cold War and the fight against the international terrorists of the time in a hugely evocative way.

Si